Lord of the flies essay

Question: ” Ralph’s survival is purely accidental. What lord of the flies show’s us is that in the end, the violent and the selfish will always overcome the peaceful and the selfless.” How far do you agree with this point of view of the novel? In the lord of the flies, by William Golding, a group of boys are left in an island all by themselves are to build a democratic society in order for themselves to live peacefully, but things don’t go according to plan and they make their own rules and eventually turn themselves into savages. The two opposing sides of human characteristics are symbolized through the main characters: Ralph who represents Law& order and jack who stands for savagery. Thorough these characters Golding emphasises the theme that the violent the selfish always overcome the peaceful and the selfless but the violent and the selfish in some instances do overcome the peaceful but this is not always the case. Ralph is dependable & responsible. He resembles law and order in a civilized manner. He is kind & sensitive like most just leaders. His sensitivity can be seen in the way he deals with jack’s disappointment at losing the leadership vote by making him the chief of the choir. Like most appreciated leaders he wants his society to operate in a democratic and in a civilized manner because without civilization there would be chaos. If we take Iraq for example, since there is no law and order, there are riots and people are left to defend themselves. This leads open doors for mobs and gangsters to take power and cause more destruction. This is not something that would happen in an ordered society. Like Trotsky (a member of the Russian communist party during Russian revolution in 1947, also known as Snowball is the novel Animal farm) Ralph is a brilliant intellectual but due to his political cunning Ralph was deceived by jacks tactics of introducing the beastie to produce fear in order to control their minds and thoughts, and later paid a huge price for his ignorance. Even though Ralph represents the values of civilization and democracy and despite his leadership skills and abilities to form law and order, he is defeated by the evil in society, which in this case is fear. It is this fears that leads them to savagery and into the primitive society where the fittest survive which in most cases turn out to be the violent and the selfish.